{"id":3142,"date":"2017-08-05T20:31:49","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T18:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2017-08-06T00:32:04","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T22:32:04","slug":"finding-of-the-week-229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/?p=3142","title":{"rendered":"Finding of the week #229"},"content":{"rendered":"

Balancing: A Crucial Phase
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I\u2019ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I\u2019ll share my new science based knowledge with you!<\/em><\/p>\n

This week: This time, I think about the requirements for a well balanced computer game. The game has to be adjusted according to the targeted playerbase’s needs, all game elements need to be relevant and a challenge’s difficulty should be aligned with the players training process caused by the gameplay.<\/p>\n

The balancing of a computer game is a difficult but also very critical phase as it heavily affects a player’s enjoyment. In addition, achieving a good balancing is crucial to satisfy the needs of the targeted playerbase. Lastly, a good balancing ensures that players experience gaming flow and hence are immersed in the gameplay.<\/p>\n

Generally, balancing has to achieve two main goals. On the one hand, balancing adjusts the balance between a game’s game mechanics and elements thus ensuring that no element is overpowered. For instance, the balancing of a strategy game needs to achieve that all units have a certain strength and a certain weakness for the purpose of achieving a ‚rock, paper, scissors‘ principle. At the same time, a unit’s efficiency and effectivity has to be balanced and adjusted so that the performance of a unit matches its price and availability. That way, balancing also has to achieve that all game elements feel relevant. Otherwise, players might realize that a few parts of a game are not that well designed which can lead to a lower enjoyment or even a high degree of frustration.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, balancing also is required to adjust the game’s general difficulty. A good game always provides players with challenges they can barely overcome. As a result of this, players can experience gaming flow which is a state of mind during which a player is completely immersed in the gameplay and derives fun from it. However, when a game is too difficult or too easy, players might feel overwhelmed or bored, are not experiencing gaming flow and ultimately start to loose interest in the game.<\/p>\n

As a result of this, it is critical to analyze the needs and characteristics of the targeted playerbase for the purpose of adjusting the game’s difficulty according to their needs. For instance, a hardcore playerbase needs tough challenges that require a perfect gameplay. At the same time, a hardcore playerbase is very resistent to failures and enjoys to retry a challenge over and over again until the challenge is exhausted. A casual gamer playerbase, on the other hand, enjoys to play games for a short amount of time only and is very interested in fast and good results. Hence, this playerbase demands a constant stream of new challenges that slowly increase in their difficulty and do not require a high amount of time to be solved.<\/p>\n

Lastly, a good balancing ensures that a game and\/or a challenge always is beatable. This requirement aligns with the balancing requirements for a flow inducing gameplay. It is crucial that a challenge only demands this amount of knowledge that probably has been trained by the player at the point of the gameplay when the challenge is encountered. Otherwise, a challenge might feel overwhelming, unfair or just based on pure luck which can destroy a player’s enjoyment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Balancing: A Crucial Phase During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I\u2019ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finding-of-the-week","category-gaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3144,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions\/3144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}